how to display a foreign word in the common app

Colleges and Universities A-Z Dartmouth College
1

<p>my kid needs to put one Greek word in his essay, but the common app does not take it. As soon as he pressed the submit button and generated a PDF file, the word becomes "????" instead. Any ideas how to do it?
Thanks a lot</p>

2

<p>Try saving it as a pdf first and then attaching that file? I’ll ask D the classics major.</p>

3

<p>We tried that already. It looks good in that stand alone PDF file, but after copy/paste it into the common app, then press the submit button to produce the PDF Preview version, it changes to “???”. Maybe your D knows some tricks?
thanks</p>

4

<p>Yeah try saving the pdf first and attach it?</p>

5

<p>There are two essays that should be filled through online common application form:

  1. General essay: (Common Application PERSONAL ESSAY)
  2. Dartmouth Supplemental Essay (WRITING SUPPLEMENT DARTMOUTH COLLEGE)</p>

<p>All applicants should put their essays into the "Text Area"s (Text Area is a standard HTML component). Applicants have very few control over the words (ONLY Bold, Italic and Underline) and may NOT change font and size of the characters.</p>

<p>Common Application use an online PDFGenerator which convert HTML to the PDF. If your kid uses Non-English characters (Ex. Greek word), PDFGenerator will convert them to the unknown characters as you said. He will not be able to apply Non-English characters into his essays. (and also other parts of the common app including "Input Text"s and "Text Area"s (EXCEPT Resume/CV and Independent Research: because they are simply converted to the PDF by the applicant)</p>

<p>Also, If he wants to use Non-English characters into the resume/research/supplemental document, I suggest convert the file to the image first first, and then try to convert the image file to the PDF.</p>

6

<p>advice from the trenches (D '13): i would just transliterate it into the roman alphabet. odds are the people reading the essay won’t speak greek and he’ll just annoy them.</p>

7

<p>thank you all.
That word also has an English version, so he will just use that, although it does not look that authentic</p>